Where Trains Go to Die

Where do trains go when their days are through,

their engines quiet, their tracks askew?

Do they sleep in fields where grasses climb,

their bodies lost to rust and time?

Perhaps they rest in a shadowed yard,

their journeys distant and their edges scarred and their whistles silenced and their wheels at peace, their endless motion finding release.

Maybe abandoned depots that are overgrown,

where vines reclaim what was once their own.

A resting place for iron and steam, lost in the haze of a bygone dream.

Or do they dream of the rails they once knew,

of the days they roared beneath skies of blue?

Do they fade to dust in the earth’s embrace,

or linger unseen in a hidden place?

A grave of steel beneath the sky—

this my friends, is where the trains go to die.

One by One

One by One

We were one with everything, once before.

Woven in threads of earth and shore we were a

a single pulse and a silent heart beat,

the sky’s and the stones, the roots beneath our feet.

But then we dreamed of conquering all,

and claimed each piece as kingdoms do fall.

One by one, we took the land,

carved OUR rivers deep with a human hand.

We split the sea and we tore the sky and we

built towers tall and watched as we heard the mountains cry.

We’ve drifted far from what we knew,

the harmony we once held true.

In search of power, space, and more,

we lost the sense of what came before,

one by one, we claimed the night and

blinded stars with our eclectic electric light.

And now, though crowned, we feel the ache

for the unity we chose to break,

a memory lost, but echoing still—

What’s left? a whisper of the mountains, rivers, and hills.

One Heron twice seen

Once, a heron cut the lake in two,

it’s reflection below with both in view

on a mirrored lake that softly sighs and lies

just beneath the gaze of the watchers eyes.

The lake itself is a quiet dream and stares back

at itself because it to wants to be seen beyond

it’s ripples framed by the reflection a skew

of a world observed yet watching too.

The heron peers, but you cannot divide the living bird from its water-side

as if the lake, in all its grace

knows its own beauty in this mirrored space.

The watcher, too, became the seen,

a different side of this liquid dream where

bird and lake and sight entwine each held moment beyond the line.

Once one heron twice, one moment shown as the lake beholds itself alone,

a beautiful truth and a secret shared between the lake and the herons stare.